Prior to the advent of the personal computer or PC, the minicomputer, and the microcomputer, the term "computer" simply referred to mainframes. What differentiates the modern mainframe from these other classes of computers is the scope of...

In the broadest sense, any large computer—large in the sense of computing capacity, that is, not in physical size--can be classified as a "mainframe" computer. Other classes of computer include supercomputers, minicomputers, and personal...

Mainframe computers are large computers designed to be central sources of digital computer operations and to provide data storage for large amounts of information. The name came from the room-sized first computers, such as the Mark I at Harvard...

A Honeywell-Bull DPS 7 mainframe, circa 1990. Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer...

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (AP) - IBM unveiled a new generation of mainframe computers Wednesday that it said would double the power of its most profitable machines and cement their position at the center of office computing. The announcement, made at the company's U.S. mainframe...

Many large companies have had successful migrations to mainframe-alternative computing environments. There are numerous approaches to this type of migration, but all shift processing away from the mainframe to a more flexible, open systems-based architecture. These alternatives provide competitive advantages in terms of time...

Watching Google Inc. rake in advertising revenue "was a wake-up call within Microsoft," the company's top technical executive, Ray Ozzie, said Tuesday. But he said Microsoft plans to do more than simply mimic Google by rolling out Web-based versions of desktop programs or following its...

Second-quarter earnings at International Business Machines Corp. rose 12 percent and beat Wall Street forecasts Wednesday, largely on the strength of IBM's software division and improvement in its services unit.From April through June, the Armonk, N.Y.-based technology bellwether earned $2.26 billion, $1.55 per share, on...